Nano continues
More stuff...still dull...blah. 8k-ish broken, next will be 10k.
Mitch was still trying to figure that out himself. With all the dolphin bodies moving around them, it was difficult to tell where the mystery animal had headed off to. He swam in a slow circle, trying to see in all directions. The trouble with a snorkeling mask is it limited one's peripheral vision so he had to turn his whole head while looking in order to see. He waved for Tony to go in one direction and he went the other way, trying to see between the playing dolphins, looking for whatever it was that nearly ran into him. He stroked with his blue flippers moving carefully behind him, getting a bit closer to the ocean floor and sand. There! Just beyond the pod of dolphins at the edge, there was something...he couldn't quite make it out so he began to swim closer.
It was large, about as large as a dolphin but leaner.... thinner. It began to take shape as he drew nearer. A head popped out, turning around to face him, the tail fanning out as if poised to take off. Mitch stopped, not daring to believe it. No, it had to be a trick. Surely...
Two human arms shot out, stroking the water to move closer to him with surprising speed. Mitch didn't move, still staring at the hair, the tail... those eyes. She was staring at him, looking him all over. There was something in her mouth and she lifted her neck to swallow the fish she'd caught... whole. Incredible, Mitch thought, his eyes unable to look anywhere else. She slowly circled him, her tail trailing behind glinting now and again in the sunlight, here green, now again blue. She seemed to be getting closer as she came around the other side of Mitchell. He could see her a bit more clearly now. There were gill slits blinking open and shut on the sides of her neck. Too real to be faked. Her behavior was starting to worry him. She was acting like she was sizing him up for something... and he had a feeling it wasn't friendly. There was no expression on her face. Only her eyes spoke. They were speaking interest with a tinge of hunger.
Mitch started to stroke backwards on impulse, maybe he shouldn't be this close to her. She seemed to anticipate his movement, following with a counter stroke. Before he could move, she was darting forward, her arms out to grab him. He let loose a stream of bubbles, arms out to fight her off if need be...!
She stopped mid-lunge, floating silent in the water and starting to sink. Mitch caught her in his arms unwillingly from her momentum, spotting the tranquilizer dart sticking out of her back. He looked over to see Tony lowering his slim gun and gesturing like a mad man for them to surface. He looked about as surprised and excited as a person could be underwater. Mitch stroked with one arm, holding onto their prize with the other. She hung limply against him, tail drawn out behind him as they reached the boat. Tony tore off his mask first and practically jumped back on board. "Did you see that??!" he was saying as Mitch surfaced and took a breath, tossing the rebreather to Tony. "She's...I mean...it's impossible! And there she is!"
"What did you shoot her for??" was the first thing out of Mitch's mouth.
"What did I...? She was going to attack you! What was I supposed to do?" Tony was working on extending the white hammock like extension off the side of the boat for Mitch and their catch. Usually it was used for baby whales and full grown dolphins. Now Mitchell was trying to get a full grown half fish, half woman onto it so they could see what this creature really was. "We don't even know what it is yet." Mitch tried to defend his unhappiness at Tony being trigger happy. Tony helped him to get the girl fish onto the medical hammock and dashed inside the cabin to get his camera. She was a bit heavier out of the water, as most underwater animals are. Mitch went to check a pulse and found he was touching the gill slits... and moved his fingers down a bit below them. She had a good steady pulse but she seemed to be shallowly gasping for breath now and again, her body twitching as she did so. Mitch lowered the hammock slightly so she could be under the water and the twitching stopped as she breathed easier. Her gills moving rhythmically. Mitch treaded water over along her body, trying to see how long she was. He estimated about seven feet to the tip of her flowing tail. Her body was primarily gray and composed of fish scales with a clear coating on them that glistened when it hit the sunlight. These scales covered her completely all the way up till they got rather spotty around her neck and arms and under her arms. There, the scales seemed to merge seamlessly with the skin with a few stray scales here and there on their own on her arms. There was a thin membrane here and there on the side of her that he hadn't noticed before. He fanned it out, it was like an extra fin or something a lionfish used to make itself look bigger. There was some of it on her arms as well. He picked up the human looking hand. There was flesh colored webbing between the fingers to aid in swimming. She was slightly slippery all over as if her body secreted the same substance that fish do to cut down on resistance in the water. Her hair was long and dark and her face... Mitch put a hand gently under her chin. The face was human, there was no doubt about it. Despite the traces of gray and green throught her coloring.
He touched her face, lifting her head out of the water for a second to turn her chin gently side to side. "Incredible," he breathed.
"Impossible more like it," Tony said, snapping away with his camera. "She can't be for real."
"And yet, here she is, big as life." Mitch climbed up a bit on the side of the boat to turn the girl fish over and look at her back. She had slight ridges noticeable along her spine that stuck out like extra pieces to her backbone. Inspection of her eyes showed she had an extra clear eyelid that covered her eyes while swimming. "She's got nictating membranes."
"No kidding? That almost makes sense, crocidiles have the same thing." Tony mused. He snapped a couple with Mitch next to her to give the feel of size for their catch. Mitchell frowned, he didn't like how still she was. "How much was in that dart you hit her with?"
"Standard dose, enough to knock out an adult dolphin for a few hours, why?"
Mitchell ran a hand over her side, feeling her respirations getting more and more shallow. Her heart rate was slowing too. "Something's not right. She's not breathing as fast as she was earlier." He put his head against her chest, listening to her heart. The heartbeat was getting a bit irregular. "I think she's having a reaction to our tranquilizer. She's going to crash on us unless we get her some medical attention."
Tony was climbing down to help Mitch with the mermaid. They hauled her up on deck and Mitch began to douse her with water from a bucket as Tony climbed up to start the motor to steer them back to shore. Mitch kept a hand on the girl fish as they zipped through the water headed back for the aquarium. "Come on, don't quit on us now," he kept telling her in low tones. She wasn't doing too good by the time they were pulling into dock. Mitch doused her once more with seawater before the two of them wrapped the girl fish in a wet blanket, each man carrying one end of her as they made their way to the main building. Sarah met them at the double doors as they'd radioed ahead to notify her they were bringing in an injured fish.
"I've got the tank working and..." Sarah's sentence was cut short as she saw the girl's head of hair sticking out of the blanket. "What in heaven's name??"
"Don't ask, just move!" Mitch said, moving past her. The quicker they got her into the infirmary tank, the better. He called for Sarah to get an epinephrine shot as Tony and he carrying the sick fish girl up the stairs to the edge of the tank. Tony jumped in to ease the girl into the water and around the corridor to the harness. Mitch moved over to the controls to start up the jets when the girl was secured. "Right, give her a shot and hook her up to the vitals monitor." There was worry in his voice as he watched the limp girl get strapped in and injected on his instructions. "Ready for current," Tony said, grabbing one of the handholds on the side of the tank. Sarah had just finished attaching the heart monitor leads, brushing the wet hair out of her eyes and giving Mitch a thumbs up.
There was a whirring as the jets started up and the current began to circulate past the girl's body, giving her more oxygen. Mitchell was watching the vitals monitors which were recieving information from the leads and wires taped to the girl fish. After the dose of epinephrine, her heart rate had increased slightly but it was still a bit irregular. Too slow for his liking. "Come on, girl..." he could hear Tony saying with a hand on the girl's back. Mitch had seen him in that position many a time with a sick dolphin or sealion. Old habits die hard, he was still encouraging the wildlife they had rescued, regardless if he believed it existed or not. Mitch still hadn't wrapped his head around the fact they had found and captured a real live mermaid.
Sarah was walking over to him, a dumbfounded look on her face. "Mitchell Walker...that cannot be a real...thing. In there." She was pointing back at the tank with an incredulous tone in her voice. "Believe it or not, we found her out in the ocean." Mitch swung around in his swivel desk chair. "She was going to attack me when Tony shot her. She must have had some sort of reaction to the tranquilizer. Either too much or something off with her body chemistry reacted the wrong way with it. She started crashing soon after we got her on the boat sling."
Sarah looked back at Tony and the girl fish in the tank and shook her head with a rare smile. "You'd better keep her alive. She's going to be the find of the century if she turns out to be for real."
"I know what you mean," Mitch said, turning back to check her vitals again. They were still a bit thready. "Have we got any counter agent for that tranquilizer?"
"Sure, in the back. I'll go get a dose." Sarah hurried off to the medical supply closet. "Make it two doses, just in case the first doesn't work." Mitch called after her.
"Roger that."
Mitch walked back over to the large window on the side of the tank, looking at the girl in the harness and up at Tony who was above her. "She's still breathing, boss." Tony gave him an update. "It's slow but steady, see," he pointed to her gills waving lazily back and forth every few seconds. "That's something anyways," Mitch said, leaning against the tank to peer in. The girl still had her eyes closed, limp and unresponsive in the infirmary harness as the currents washed by her. They were making the thin decorative like membranes attached to her tail fin wave every so slightly as if in a breeze. "Where did you come from?" he whispered to the mermaid, wondering at her existence.
"Here's the counter agent, Mitch," Sarah handed him two pre-filled syringes. Mitch took them and handed one up to Tony. If they could only keep her alive long enough to find out where she did come from. There were so many unanswered questions.
"Heart rate is coming back up, I think," Tony said, feeling a pulse under the girl's neck. "There's a definite improvement." He pulled back as the creature moved slightly as if in her sleep. A slow out stroking of the arm, her eyes still closed. Mitch breathed a sigh of relief. "Looks like she's going to make it after all. Lets let her recover and see how she is when she wakes up."
But that wasn't until many hours later after the sun had gone down and the aquarium had closed for the night...
It was about nine o'clock at night. All of the tourists had gone home and the security guards had started their rounds of the locked perimeter. Inside the gates, the marine biologists and other staff had bedded down their animal friends, feeding them one last time and making sure they were safe for the night. One by one they clocked out. All except the last three. Sarah left first, saying she had to check on her cats at home and to let her know if anything happened during the night. Tony left next after the waiting game had gotten too boring and he couldn't think of anything else to clean or organize in their office space. Finally Mitch told him to go home, he would wait out the night a little longer to make sure their new friend made it through the night. So far the girl fish had slept straight through since her vitals had stabilized. Tony made him promise to call him if anything happened as well.
Soon after Tony left, Mitch put on a pair of headphones to listen to some jazz... and soon was fast asleep in his office chair. It had been a long day...
Inside the tank, the jets had been turned down slightly to a quieter hum as they moved the water around the tank and past the gills of the sleeping girl fish who hung in the body harness. On the computer screens near where Mitch was sleeping, one of the steady lines jumped slightly as her brain waves flickered. She was starting to come around...
Warm. Everything was quite warm around her. Warm and dark. She felt like sleeping for much longer but something was waking her up. Maybe it was the situation. Something didn't seem right. She felt awfully strange. Lightheaded and woozy. Opening her eyes, she blinked in the water, trying to focus and get her bearings. A faint light was filtering in through the water... sideways. What had happened to the moon? Was it now beneath the surface? She reached out a hand a bit blindly and hit something solid off to her left. Blinking, she tried to see what she was touching. She reached over, placing both hands on it. It was smooth and seethrough... a sort of solid window in the water. Beyond the solid seethrough wall was the light coming from one small spot. She couldn't make out anything beyond the wall.
Something was around her too, and sticking to her. It didn't feel too good. Rather like she was tied up.
Mitch was still trying to figure that out himself. With all the dolphin bodies moving around them, it was difficult to tell where the mystery animal had headed off to. He swam in a slow circle, trying to see in all directions. The trouble with a snorkeling mask is it limited one's peripheral vision so he had to turn his whole head while looking in order to see. He waved for Tony to go in one direction and he went the other way, trying to see between the playing dolphins, looking for whatever it was that nearly ran into him. He stroked with his blue flippers moving carefully behind him, getting a bit closer to the ocean floor and sand. There! Just beyond the pod of dolphins at the edge, there was something...he couldn't quite make it out so he began to swim closer.
It was large, about as large as a dolphin but leaner.... thinner. It began to take shape as he drew nearer. A head popped out, turning around to face him, the tail fanning out as if poised to take off. Mitch stopped, not daring to believe it. No, it had to be a trick. Surely...
Two human arms shot out, stroking the water to move closer to him with surprising speed. Mitch didn't move, still staring at the hair, the tail... those eyes. She was staring at him, looking him all over. There was something in her mouth and she lifted her neck to swallow the fish she'd caught... whole. Incredible, Mitch thought, his eyes unable to look anywhere else. She slowly circled him, her tail trailing behind glinting now and again in the sunlight, here green, now again blue. She seemed to be getting closer as she came around the other side of Mitchell. He could see her a bit more clearly now. There were gill slits blinking open and shut on the sides of her neck. Too real to be faked. Her behavior was starting to worry him. She was acting like she was sizing him up for something... and he had a feeling it wasn't friendly. There was no expression on her face. Only her eyes spoke. They were speaking interest with a tinge of hunger.
Mitch started to stroke backwards on impulse, maybe he shouldn't be this close to her. She seemed to anticipate his movement, following with a counter stroke. Before he could move, she was darting forward, her arms out to grab him. He let loose a stream of bubbles, arms out to fight her off if need be...!
She stopped mid-lunge, floating silent in the water and starting to sink. Mitch caught her in his arms unwillingly from her momentum, spotting the tranquilizer dart sticking out of her back. He looked over to see Tony lowering his slim gun and gesturing like a mad man for them to surface. He looked about as surprised and excited as a person could be underwater. Mitch stroked with one arm, holding onto their prize with the other. She hung limply against him, tail drawn out behind him as they reached the boat. Tony tore off his mask first and practically jumped back on board. "Did you see that??!" he was saying as Mitch surfaced and took a breath, tossing the rebreather to Tony. "She's...I mean...it's impossible! And there she is!"
"What did you shoot her for??" was the first thing out of Mitch's mouth.
"What did I...? She was going to attack you! What was I supposed to do?" Tony was working on extending the white hammock like extension off the side of the boat for Mitch and their catch. Usually it was used for baby whales and full grown dolphins. Now Mitchell was trying to get a full grown half fish, half woman onto it so they could see what this creature really was. "We don't even know what it is yet." Mitch tried to defend his unhappiness at Tony being trigger happy. Tony helped him to get the girl fish onto the medical hammock and dashed inside the cabin to get his camera. She was a bit heavier out of the water, as most underwater animals are. Mitch went to check a pulse and found he was touching the gill slits... and moved his fingers down a bit below them. She had a good steady pulse but she seemed to be shallowly gasping for breath now and again, her body twitching as she did so. Mitch lowered the hammock slightly so she could be under the water and the twitching stopped as she breathed easier. Her gills moving rhythmically. Mitch treaded water over along her body, trying to see how long she was. He estimated about seven feet to the tip of her flowing tail. Her body was primarily gray and composed of fish scales with a clear coating on them that glistened when it hit the sunlight. These scales covered her completely all the way up till they got rather spotty around her neck and arms and under her arms. There, the scales seemed to merge seamlessly with the skin with a few stray scales here and there on their own on her arms. There was a thin membrane here and there on the side of her that he hadn't noticed before. He fanned it out, it was like an extra fin or something a lionfish used to make itself look bigger. There was some of it on her arms as well. He picked up the human looking hand. There was flesh colored webbing between the fingers to aid in swimming. She was slightly slippery all over as if her body secreted the same substance that fish do to cut down on resistance in the water. Her hair was long and dark and her face... Mitch put a hand gently under her chin. The face was human, there was no doubt about it. Despite the traces of gray and green throught her coloring.
He touched her face, lifting her head out of the water for a second to turn her chin gently side to side. "Incredible," he breathed.
"Impossible more like it," Tony said, snapping away with his camera. "She can't be for real."
"And yet, here she is, big as life." Mitch climbed up a bit on the side of the boat to turn the girl fish over and look at her back. She had slight ridges noticeable along her spine that stuck out like extra pieces to her backbone. Inspection of her eyes showed she had an extra clear eyelid that covered her eyes while swimming. "She's got nictating membranes."
"No kidding? That almost makes sense, crocidiles have the same thing." Tony mused. He snapped a couple with Mitch next to her to give the feel of size for their catch. Mitchell frowned, he didn't like how still she was. "How much was in that dart you hit her with?"
"Standard dose, enough to knock out an adult dolphin for a few hours, why?"
Mitchell ran a hand over her side, feeling her respirations getting more and more shallow. Her heart rate was slowing too. "Something's not right. She's not breathing as fast as she was earlier." He put his head against her chest, listening to her heart. The heartbeat was getting a bit irregular. "I think she's having a reaction to our tranquilizer. She's going to crash on us unless we get her some medical attention."
Tony was climbing down to help Mitch with the mermaid. They hauled her up on deck and Mitch began to douse her with water from a bucket as Tony climbed up to start the motor to steer them back to shore. Mitch kept a hand on the girl fish as they zipped through the water headed back for the aquarium. "Come on, don't quit on us now," he kept telling her in low tones. She wasn't doing too good by the time they were pulling into dock. Mitch doused her once more with seawater before the two of them wrapped the girl fish in a wet blanket, each man carrying one end of her as they made their way to the main building. Sarah met them at the double doors as they'd radioed ahead to notify her they were bringing in an injured fish.
"I've got the tank working and..." Sarah's sentence was cut short as she saw the girl's head of hair sticking out of the blanket. "What in heaven's name??"
"Don't ask, just move!" Mitch said, moving past her. The quicker they got her into the infirmary tank, the better. He called for Sarah to get an epinephrine shot as Tony and he carrying the sick fish girl up the stairs to the edge of the tank. Tony jumped in to ease the girl into the water and around the corridor to the harness. Mitch moved over to the controls to start up the jets when the girl was secured. "Right, give her a shot and hook her up to the vitals monitor." There was worry in his voice as he watched the limp girl get strapped in and injected on his instructions. "Ready for current," Tony said, grabbing one of the handholds on the side of the tank. Sarah had just finished attaching the heart monitor leads, brushing the wet hair out of her eyes and giving Mitch a thumbs up.
There was a whirring as the jets started up and the current began to circulate past the girl's body, giving her more oxygen. Mitchell was watching the vitals monitors which were recieving information from the leads and wires taped to the girl fish. After the dose of epinephrine, her heart rate had increased slightly but it was still a bit irregular. Too slow for his liking. "Come on, girl..." he could hear Tony saying with a hand on the girl's back. Mitch had seen him in that position many a time with a sick dolphin or sealion. Old habits die hard, he was still encouraging the wildlife they had rescued, regardless if he believed it existed or not. Mitch still hadn't wrapped his head around the fact they had found and captured a real live mermaid.
Sarah was walking over to him, a dumbfounded look on her face. "Mitchell Walker...that cannot be a real...thing. In there." She was pointing back at the tank with an incredulous tone in her voice. "Believe it or not, we found her out in the ocean." Mitch swung around in his swivel desk chair. "She was going to attack me when Tony shot her. She must have had some sort of reaction to the tranquilizer. Either too much or something off with her body chemistry reacted the wrong way with it. She started crashing soon after we got her on the boat sling."
Sarah looked back at Tony and the girl fish in the tank and shook her head with a rare smile. "You'd better keep her alive. She's going to be the find of the century if she turns out to be for real."
"I know what you mean," Mitch said, turning back to check her vitals again. They were still a bit thready. "Have we got any counter agent for that tranquilizer?"
"Sure, in the back. I'll go get a dose." Sarah hurried off to the medical supply closet. "Make it two doses, just in case the first doesn't work." Mitch called after her.
"Roger that."
Mitch walked back over to the large window on the side of the tank, looking at the girl in the harness and up at Tony who was above her. "She's still breathing, boss." Tony gave him an update. "It's slow but steady, see," he pointed to her gills waving lazily back and forth every few seconds. "That's something anyways," Mitch said, leaning against the tank to peer in. The girl still had her eyes closed, limp and unresponsive in the infirmary harness as the currents washed by her. They were making the thin decorative like membranes attached to her tail fin wave every so slightly as if in a breeze. "Where did you come from?" he whispered to the mermaid, wondering at her existence.
"Here's the counter agent, Mitch," Sarah handed him two pre-filled syringes. Mitch took them and handed one up to Tony. If they could only keep her alive long enough to find out where she did come from. There were so many unanswered questions.
"Heart rate is coming back up, I think," Tony said, feeling a pulse under the girl's neck. "There's a definite improvement." He pulled back as the creature moved slightly as if in her sleep. A slow out stroking of the arm, her eyes still closed. Mitch breathed a sigh of relief. "Looks like she's going to make it after all. Lets let her recover and see how she is when she wakes up."
But that wasn't until many hours later after the sun had gone down and the aquarium had closed for the night...
It was about nine o'clock at night. All of the tourists had gone home and the security guards had started their rounds of the locked perimeter. Inside the gates, the marine biologists and other staff had bedded down their animal friends, feeding them one last time and making sure they were safe for the night. One by one they clocked out. All except the last three. Sarah left first, saying she had to check on her cats at home and to let her know if anything happened during the night. Tony left next after the waiting game had gotten too boring and he couldn't think of anything else to clean or organize in their office space. Finally Mitch told him to go home, he would wait out the night a little longer to make sure their new friend made it through the night. So far the girl fish had slept straight through since her vitals had stabilized. Tony made him promise to call him if anything happened as well.
Soon after Tony left, Mitch put on a pair of headphones to listen to some jazz... and soon was fast asleep in his office chair. It had been a long day...
Inside the tank, the jets had been turned down slightly to a quieter hum as they moved the water around the tank and past the gills of the sleeping girl fish who hung in the body harness. On the computer screens near where Mitch was sleeping, one of the steady lines jumped slightly as her brain waves flickered. She was starting to come around...
Warm. Everything was quite warm around her. Warm and dark. She felt like sleeping for much longer but something was waking her up. Maybe it was the situation. Something didn't seem right. She felt awfully strange. Lightheaded and woozy. Opening her eyes, she blinked in the water, trying to focus and get her bearings. A faint light was filtering in through the water... sideways. What had happened to the moon? Was it now beneath the surface? She reached out a hand a bit blindly and hit something solid off to her left. Blinking, she tried to see what she was touching. She reached over, placing both hands on it. It was smooth and seethrough... a sort of solid window in the water. Beyond the solid seethrough wall was the light coming from one small spot. She couldn't make out anything beyond the wall.
Something was around her too, and sticking to her. It didn't feel too good. Rather like she was tied up.